The boat industry was in another of its typically brutal down cycles in the early 1990s when Irwin Jacobs decided that his business didn't have to be so sink-or-swim. Lured with the right bait, Irwin figured, fishermen could offer his company, Genmar Holdings Inc., a buffer of steady, stable growth. After all, the U.S. is a nation of fishing fools--a group estimated to be 55 million strong that buys $40 billion in equipment each year, from rods to reels to tackle boxes. Jacobs, 60, saw a rare and untapped bounty. "I don't make a hundred bets," says Jacobs, who in his...
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